


Apostatic

by otterzest



Series: All These Abandoned Buildings [4]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:27:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23370922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otterzest/pseuds/otterzest
Summary: Apostatic selection:A type of selection which operates on a polymorphic species. Classically, the term is used in relation to prey species that have several different morphological forms. It occurs when, in proportion to their frequency in the population, rare forms of a species are preyed on less than common forms, thus conferring a selective advantage on them. (Oxford Encyclopedia, 2020)Odo learns a lesson.
Series: All These Abandoned Buildings [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662244
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Apostatic

In the lab, Dr. Mora was smiling at Odo. It was the pitying expression Odo had come to know and despise, the one he received every time he requested to do something, try anything, that required independence from the Bajoran scientist. 

The doctor’s daemon, a [magpie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4Mm3rSFo88) with blank shiny eyes, made a sound like metal rasping against metal.

“Oh, Odo. You have learned so much and progressed so far, I sometimes forget how naive you truly are.”

The patronizing, paternal tone made Odo impulsively want to sprout claws and blades and teeth and pounce on the humanoid, to shred his non-regenerative muscles and skin and alien solid bones, but he resisted the urge. He was too tired for defiance. 

“I don’t understand.” Odo had sat down in a chair opposite the doctor, because that is what the humanoids expected him to do, but he wished he could return to his beaker and resume his normal form. Already he could feel the carefully constructed facial features shifting slightly on his face; he was slowly falling apart from stress. He’d been this shape for too long. 

Dr. Mora brought his hands together, rested his arms on his knees and leaned forward slightly. The magpie on his shoulder tilted her head, stared Odo down with shiny eager eyes. “You have only ever met adult humanoids, correct? You have not seen Bajoran children before.” 

A parade of scientists constantly flowed through the lab, all stopping to poke and prod and stare at Odo. All adult Bajorans and Cardassians. “That is correct.”

“So you have only met people with settled daemons, then.”

Odo let his facial features slack, a comfortable action that he knew conveyed confusion. “Again, I don’t understand. How are they different?”

“The daemons of young people are different. They can change shapes, going from form to form. It isn’t until adulthood that they turn into a single shape and stay that way forever.” 

Odo sat, stunned. He had never seen any other living thing change shape, apart from himself. 

The little animal had shapeshifted so swiftly, so easily, with no obvious intermediate stage. Odo knew that, going from form to form, he briefly returned to liquid state out of necessity. This creature had simply twisted itself into something new, feathers becoming fur becoming flesh. But it was still a change of form, and it had stopped Odo dead in his tracks. Dr. Mora was preoccupied - bragging to some Cardassian dignitary about the importance of his discovery, no doubt - so he did not notice Odo’s sudden intense desperate stare. Something inside of every regenerative cell in his body was screaming at him, a sudden intense wall of noise:

_\- like me like me like me like me like me like me -_

If he had a heart it would have been pounding. He suddenly felt something like what he had heard humanoids describe as hunger, a powerful desire to seize upon this other creature, to ask it questions, to find answers, to communicate, to take joy in kinship for the first time in his conscious life.

Without thinking he stepped forward and kneeled down. The other shapeshifter swirled from a small delicate bird to a larger mammal with black and white markings, and watched him with large wet eyes. A long-dormant instinct suddenly awakened and Odo reached out a now-liquid hand to commune with this being in the most basic way he knew how. 

Instead of welcoming liquid state his cells met with real fur overlaying shifting muscle, horrifically solid. And then there was a high pitched scream and the animal drew back yelping, crying, and Dr. Mora had grabbed Odo by the shoulders and yanked him to his feet, fingers digging into limbs softened by shock and fear. There was chaos all around Odo in a rapidly widening circle, Bajorans crying out in dismay, Cardassians laughing, children weeping, Dr. Mora loudly assuring the crowd that his discovery had meant no harm, and was merely ignorant of social taboos, that Odo lacked a soul and of course he would naturally be curious about what he did not have. All the while the doctor kept an iron grip on Odo’s arm, and Odo crosses his arms and stared at the floor and felt himself get smaller and smaller under the gaze of dozens. 

“So, I touched that child’s daemon.” 

Dr. Moea nodded, tight-lipped but not unsympathetic. “You did indeed. One of the biggest social taboos on Bajor and a hundred other worlds with humanoid beings. But not to worry - I already spoke with the girl’s parents, and she and her daemon were shaken but otherwise unharmed. The incident could have gone much worse. We are fortunate - the parents are important representatives on Bajor, and they could make your life much more difficult if they were so inclined.” Dr. Mora straightened, stood up from his seat, began to pace back and forth in his office. Odo gloomily recognized this as the preamble to yet another lecture, the wind-up to a bombastic spiel that once again made the doctor out to be a saint, and Odo the unwitting sinner. 

“Of course, I blame myself.” Dr. Mora turned, hands clasped behind his back. “There is clearly a blind spot in your education. Daemons are so fundamental a part of us that it would not even occur to me to describe them to you! After all you are an observer, I did not need to describe hair, or hands, or faces.”

Odo wished desperately to go home and be left alone. “Please, Doctor, educate me.”

Dr. Mora smiled, pleased. 

“I don’t expect you to understand the degree to which you could have harmed that girl.”

Odo disagreed. After Dr Mora had whisked him back into the lab and left to go “smooth things over,” as he said, Odo had desperately tried to shake off the nauseating wrong-feeling that still clung to his mimicked skin. Shifting his hands did not stop it, touching other things did not stem the chest-tightening revulsion he could still feel. 

He rubbed his palms on his lap, an unthinking attempt to scrub the memory away. “Tell me more about the young daemons.”

“Well! When a child is born, and after they start to think and move and more or less become a person, they start to produce particles that manifest into an external daemon. These daemons can change animal forms - they are almost always animals - but once a child becomes an adult, their daemon is frozen into one static shape. This shape tells you about who you are as a person. Since children, it could be said, have unlimited potential - their daemons are not limited to a single form.”

“But they are still daemons - half of a whole, yes?” 

“Indeed they are. And, like mature daemons, they are not made of organic matter, but of a completely different inorganic particle.”

Inorganic made Odo look up sharply. He was partially inorganic. “What particle?” 

Dr. Mora tsked, crossed his arms. “It depends on who you ask. If you ask the Vedics, daemons are made from the same material as the Prophets’ Tears: they act as a sacred intermediary between Bajorans and the Prophets, guiding us, granting us wisdom.” 

“...and if you ask anyone else...?” 

The doctor huffed. His daemon tossed her head, as if physically shaking off irritation. “If you ask any of the more enlightened, if atheistic, Bajorans they would tell you that daemons are non biological living entities created solely out of a unique particle similar to dark matter. There is a higher concentration of Rusakov particles near the so called Celestial Temple, that is true, but it is not a result of divine intervention.” 

“In fact…” Dr. Mora tapped at his jaw, thoughtful. “That was one of my early hypotheses about you, Odo. That you were some sort of severed primordial daemon. But I don’t think that’s correct: we tried exposing you to particle daemon and solid ones, and you did not react appropriately at all. An intriguing mystery.”

“So you’ve said.”

“We could be wrong, and you could be daemonic in nature. That assumption implies that you are not a complete being on your own. Studies on severed daemons have shown that a dæmon separated from her Bajoran - or other humanoid I suppose - has exactly one desire in her short existence: to reunite with her other half. But since we found you at such a primitive state, perhaps you do not even remember your Bajoran. 

...Do you feel as though you are an incomplete being?”

_“...Constable? Odo?”_

_He snapped back into the present, turned, glanced down at the display he was standing over. The realization that someone had asked him a question slowly dawned._

_Chief O’Brien frowned. “Are you all right?” He was leaning with both hands on the panel, scanner in one hand, his little terrier daemon seated next to the other. She cocked her head to the side and glanced at her human._

_Odo cleared his throat - an easy diversion tactic, a completely unnecessary gesture that humanoids appreciated regardless of its uselessness - and turned back to the task at hand. “Apologies, Chief.”_

_O’Brien still looked a little concerned. “Anything wrong?”_

_“No. I just thought I saw -“ Odo shook his head. “Nothing is wrong. Sorry, what were you saying about decks 7 and 10?”_

_“Right. Well we probably won’t get the life support system back up online for a few more days. You’re going to need some officers to check these air locks here and here...”_

_As the engineer continued, pointing at various areas of interest on the schematic, Odo quickly glanced back over his shoulder at the Bajoran family on the promenade. They did not appear to have noticed him, or even recognized him. If he was correct. If he was not imagining things._

_The little girl was now a young adult, with an earring like her mother’s that sparkled in the dim lighting as she talked and laughed. The dog daemon was still black and white, with the same liquid eyes, but it no longer held the same sense of kinetic energy and freedom that it once had. Now it was just a solid creature, a mature daemon like the hundred others living on the station._

“Is that something that will happen to me?” Odo asked. He was exhausted now, molecules trembling from holding this unnatural form for so long. “Will I lose the ability to change shape?”

Dr. Mora paused, thoughtful. The magpie trilled softly. “I’m not sure. I don’t think anyone knows. Is that something you would like, Odo?” 

_The shapeshifter turned his attention back to the engineering chief, to the task at hand. He felt something like what the humanoids call sorrow, or loss. Major Kira had once told him about empathy. Maybe this was that._

_But if it was for the girl, or for the daemon, or for himself, he could not say._


End file.
